Semmelweis
Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis (1 july1818 – 13 august 1865)
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician who discovered, by 1847, that puerperal fever ("childbed fever") could be drastically cut by using hand washing standards in obstetrical clinics.
While employed as an assistant to the professor of the maternity clinic at the Vienna General Hospital in Austria in 1847, Semmelweis introduced hand washing with chlorinated lime solutions for interns who had performed autopsies. This immediately reduced the incidence of fatal puerperal fever from about 10 per cent (range 5–30 per cent) to about 1–2 per cent. At the time, diseases were attributed to many different and unrelated causes. Each case was considered unique, just like a human person is unique. Semmelweis’ hypothesis that there was only one cause, that all that mattered was cleanliness, was extreme at the time and was largely ignored, rejected or ridiculed. He was dismissed from the hospital and harassed by the medical community in Vienna, which eventually forced him to move to Budapest. Semmelweis was outraged by the indifference of the medical profession and began writing open and increasingly angry letters to prominent European obstetricians, at times denouncing them as irresponsible murderers. His contemporaries, including his wife, believed he was losing his mind, and in 1865 he was committed to an asylum (mental institution). Semmelweis died there only 14 days later, possibly after being severely beaten by guards. Semmelweis’ practice only earned widespread acceptance years after his death, when Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease, which offered a theoretical explanation for Semmelweis’ findings. Semmelweis is considered a pioneer of antiseptic procedures. THE SEMMELWEIS REFLEX The Semmelweis reflex or “Semmelweis effect” is a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs or paradigms.
(the text in this FEMWIKI forum is a literal copy of the biography of Semmelweis, please see the link in the reference below for more detailed background)
